Portable telephones which may be carried by hand are rapidly growing in commercial acceptability. The user of a hand-carried portable telephone can make calls on the way from the office to his car, or on a commuter train, or anywhere else. However, as a disadvantage, in an automobile, for example, the transmission and receiving effectiveness of such a portable telephone may be limited by the steel structure of the car in which the user sits.
For this reason, car telephones usually have an outside antenna, often an outside antenna in which an antenna portion inside the car directly communicates with the car telephone, but also communicates in an inductive or capacitive manner through an automobile window to an outer antenna attached to the window, without any physical contact being made between the two antenna parts through the window. Such antennas are sold by Mobile Mark, Inc., of Schiller Park, Ill.
Since a hand-held telephone carries its own antenna, and thus is not in connection with an outer antenna carried on a car or the like, the reception of a hand-held telephone can be poor when the user is attempting to make a telephone call inside of an automobile, or anywhere else where steel structural members or the like are present to interfere with signal transmission.
To make a portable telephone more versatile and useable, it may be provided with a removable antenna so that the socket of the portable telephone that carries the antenna may be connected to another, more suitable antenna. However, that is somewhat cumbersome, having the risk that the removed antenna can be lost. Also, many portable telephones carry permanent antennas, so that the above expedient is not readily available in their case.
In accordance with this invention an antenna connector is provided for communication with a portable telephone, or any other transmitter/receiver, which does not require the removal of an antenna to make connection. Thus, the portable telephone or other transmitter/receiver may be temporarily connected to an auxiliary antenna through the antenna connector of this invention. A portable telephone, for example, may be connected to an exterior automobile antenna while the user is sitting in the automobile. Then, the antenna connector and the portable telephone may be easily disconnected, and the portable telephone carried away by the user. Similarly, any other type of transmitter/receiver may thus be temporarily connected to any antenna system, to enhance the signal transmission and reception, and the overall utility of the system.